Candied sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and cabbage bake in the oven. Last-minute ingredients make their way into a food-grade container of potato salad.

“It’s 11:35. Let’s roll,” Ronald Kinnaird calls out.

It’s the signal for seasoned and flour-drenched chicken wings and drumsticks to hit the deep fryer. It’s all about timing back in the kitchen of the Manna Cafe, a Sunday all-you-can-eat soul food buffet in Harrisburg.

“So, we don’t rush it, and it’s fried all the way through,” said Kinnaird.

For 16 years, members of the Kappa Omega chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and its paid kitchen staff have hosted the weekly buffet. It draws everyone from Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson to post-church crowds and the homeless.

The brick building with the purple awning is a city fixture.

“This is more than a restaurant. People come here from church. They hug and kiss each other like they haven’t seen each other in years. It’s a social and cultural atmosphere here,” John F. Frye, supervisor of operations, said.

As soon as the doors open at noon, a few diners filter in from the cold to the dimly lit dining room. Loud gospel music plays as mentees, including high school students, take orders for lemonade or iced tea.

All homemade. All made by Ronald Kinnaird’s mom, Bettye Kinnaird, a retired beautician. She has been baking the desserts for about 15 years.

“I just put my mind on it, and just do it,” she says.

It’s partly the homemade soul food that draws people to take a seat at one of Manna Cafe’s plastic-covered tables.

They have all the proper condiments: bottles of Texas Pete hot sauce, miniature containers of Country Crock butter, sugar packets, toothpicks and signs reminding diners to tip their servers.

A half-dozen kitchen staff start preparing the food on Saturdays and return around 7:30 a.m. Sunday to ensure all of it is cooked before noon.

“I just wake up in the morning, come here and get busy,” head chef Jerry Crosson said.

The nontraditional restaurant is an extension of the onetime Manna Gospel Cafe that operated at Fourth and Reily Streets in Harrisburg. The fraternity took over the rights, and in 1996 moved it to their fraternity house on State Street.

“We said the fraternity house has to have a job, and the job was opening a cafe,” Frye said. “We prayed for 50 people. If we got 50 people, we were close.”

In the beginning, profits from the Sunday buffet as a fundraiser for the fraternity. But in recent years, the number of people coming to the cafe has dropped from about 200 to between 160 and 170 a week because of the economy, Ronald Kinnaird said.

Fraternity members say they are lucky to break even. Catered on-site events, such as anniversary and birthday parties, supplement the group’s income.

Members have debated about closing the cafe, but in Ronald Kinnaird’s words: “Guys, you’ve got to look at our community. They look at us as a positive thing in community.”

By 1:30 p.m., tables start to fill up quickly as churches let out. Women enter wearing hats and fur coats. Some of the men wear suits.

“The beautiful thing is you can come straight from church. You don’t have to wait until it’s ready,” said Esther E. Edwards, a former Harrisburg School Board member.

The din of conversation competes with the gospel music. Community activist Karl Singleton attends the buffet a couple of times a month with his wife, Gina Finley, and their 7-year-old son, Karl III.

“Mainly just to come out for fellowship in the community. It has more of a home feel, and the staff is second to none,” Finley said.

“You don’t find this in a franchise restaurant,” Singleton said.

Manna Cafe Soul Food Buffet at 2020 State St. in Harrisburg operates noon-5 p.m. Sundays, 717-255-9081. Price is $13.25 for adults, $10.87 for senior citizens and $8.22 for children. Parking is available next door at Morris Laundromation Services.

Related Stories

Featured Story

Get 'Today's Front Page' in your inbox

This newsletter is sent every morning at 6 a.m. and includes the morning's top stories, a full list of obituaries, links to comics and puzzles and the most recent news, sports and entertainment headlines.

optionalCheck here if you do not want to receive additional email offers and information.See our privacy policy

Thank you for signing up for 'Today's Front Page'

To view and subscribe to any of our other newsletters, please click here.